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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24675988">Don't Leave Me Sinking</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Smosh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Based on a Paramore Song, First Relationship, First Time, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, More tags to be added, Pining, Songfic, Summer Romance</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:29:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,804</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24675988</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A heatwave had cast its ugly, humid shadow on Southern California. It wasn’t unusual for this time of year, but Damien hated heatwaves more than anything else. They meant people would come flocking to any source of water like it was the only thing that would keep them from slowly crumbling into dust.<br/>---<br/>The story of summer love, trying new things, and the consequences of them.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Damien Haas/Mark Raub, Damien Haas/Shayne Topp</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Don't Leave Me Sinking</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A heatwave had cast its ugly, humid shadow on Southern California. It wasn’t unusual for this time of year, but Damien hated heatwaves more than anything else. They meant people would come flocking to any source of water like it was the only thing that would keep them from slowly crumbling into dust.</p><p>
  <span>The summer crowd was, of course, what kept the business running - what kept Damien having a job in the first place, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>God</span>
  </em>
  <span> he couldn’t stand the entitled mothers and their bratty kids who couldn’t accept the fact that a snack was 65 cents more than they expected.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He breathes in another cooling gasp of air from the freezer and pushes his hair back, sighing as the momentary solace from the sweltering heat quickly disappears when he closes the freezer door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The stagnant, intolerable warmth was worsened by the tantalizing sight of groups of friends playfully splashing each other in the pool a mere fifteen feet away from the shack. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Damien wasn’t always a fan of swimming - he especially hated open water, but he would give up the rest of his paycheck for the summer for a chance to jump into the chlorine-blue pool. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thankfully, he only had two hours left in his shift. Two hours, he could get through two hours, he thought to himself. By the time he left the scorching rays of the sun would have sunk so low into the sky that it turned pretty pinks and oranges that helped him forget about the stressors of the workday.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sound of a shrill whistle blowing caught his attention suddenly. Usually, he could get away with barely hearing the lifeguard’s whistles since it normally wasn’t an actual emergency he needed to be ready to call an ambulance on. But something about the combination of heat and boredom kept him from slipping into his usual customer service trance to hear the lifeguard warn a child about running in the pool area.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Now normally he could tell who was barking orders from the sound of their voice - it wasn’t a huge pool, and there were only so many lifeguards- but Damien was surprised to find that he couldn’t put a face to the voice he was hearing. It was lower than Tanner’s but higher than Ian’s, and it definitely wasn’t Kimmy.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Damien squints through the waves of heat coming off the metal counter to see a young guy, about his age, with messily pushed back sandy hair and strong shoulders letting the whistle he just blew fall back to his chest as he leaned against the lifeguard chair with his arms crossed over his chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A flicker of recognition shot through Damien’s mind looking at him. Maybe he knew him from school, or from some summer camp he went to as a kid, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember if he had ever seen him within 100 yards of the pool.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As he kept looking, he became more and more aware that he was blatantly staring at this kid, but he didn’t feel like moving his gaze to stare into space and trance through the remainder of his shift. He kept going through places in his mind to place the face he was seeing - a passing face on the lawn of an amphitheater concert, a clerk at a retail store in the mall waiting patiently for someone to ask for help, a rare but welcome attendant of one of his elective classes that didn’t count towards the credits needed for graduation. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eventually, Damien settles on the last one, as he recalls a distant memory of that same sandy blond hair tucked under a baseball cap sliding into the furthest seat from the teacher ten minutes after the first bell had rung. He couldn’t find a name in the recesses of his mind, but he knew he could ask around and piece together a full identity for this new coworker of his.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Staring at this not-really stranger was somewhat more entertaining than zoning in on a piece of pavement and thinking about conversations that would never happen in a million years. He wasn’t all that unique from a lot of the other guys Damien had come across in a town like his, but that didn’t keep him from admiring the small details that set him apart from the other bro types he had seen. The way his jaw sharpened under his ears but softened as it came to his chin, how the angles of his nose looked like they were carved from a slab of marble. He found himself staring for so long that he was making observations in his head that he wasn’t entirely aware he was acknowledging. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Damien felt his shoulders relax, and he considered making looking at this guy his focus for the next two hours until he nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of a snarky voice by his side.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Stare much?” Mari asks, and Damien slams his hand hard into the metal counter and stifles a curse loud enough to be a vocabulary lesson for the toddlers in the shallow end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me!” He lets out a shaking laugh, allowing the heartbeat to settle in his chest. Mari smiles coyly, a signature of her’s, and reached into the fridge for a drink.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Although Mari was technically his boss, she isn’t even a year older than him, and barely more mature. Most of the time she only checks in when she gets bored or so she would seem like she was better at her job than she was to her superiors. Damien didn’t really mind it though - Mari is nice enough, and she’s pretty damn funny when it’s just the two of them cleaning out the truck long after the pool had closed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think you need to have the shit scared out of you sometimes,” she says, taking a sip of the soda she had cracked open. “You daydream too much for somebody who doesn’t do drugs.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Damien couldn’t help but let out a sarcastic laugh in response to her comment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mari ignores his laugh and glances around the truck, seemingly deeming it clean enough not to warrant a passive ‘clean up your shit.’</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Damien briefly turns his attention back to the lifeguard, who was now sitting in the chair with a dark pair of sunglasses sitting on his nose. He couldn’t gather anything from his expression, but the way he was sitting - leaned back and legs spread apart - was enough to serve as some interest to Damien.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is he new?” Damien gestures to the lifeguard and Mari grows a coy smile on her face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Somebody got a crush?” She teases, poking him in the shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Damien brushes her off. “No, I’ve never seen him before. Just curious.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“M-hm.” Mari hums. She takes another slow sip of her soda before she responds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“His name’s Shayne. Just got hired like three days ago. Haven’t heard a lot about him.” She shrugs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cool.” Damien says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn't pay much mind to the lifeguard for the rest of his shift. Mari eventually steps out of the truck to go back to whatever she was doing before -  probably just scrolling through Twitter on her phone - and Damien returns to sweating like a pig under the metal roof.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As the shadows grow longer on the pavement and the people slowly trickle out into the parking lot, Damien miraculously begins to straighten up, his energy replenishing in a way that could only be described as coming out of the trance of customer service protocol.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The evening lights come on the fences and the gate gets locked by one of the managers Damien can’t see in the fading dusk light. He wipes down the counters with a newfound gusto and locks up the truck, humming a song that has become stuck in his head from the hours of listening to the Top 40 station for the past six hours.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Punching out is like doing a line of coke to Damien. Adrenaline fills his veins- no matter how terrible or long a day he’s had, leaving work gives him such a rush he can stay up for hours afterward. He locks the gate behind him as he enters the parking lot, the headlights on his car flash when he unlocks it. His phone automatically connects to the speaker in his car, and all it takes is for him to press play and a perfect song plays. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Driving back from work down the winding streets of small-town California always feels like driving through a movie scene. The smell of the ocean dances lightly on the wind, so faint you could barely smell the salt. The breeze makes the palm tree leaves sway gently, and the sunset never looks entirely real, like it came from the mind of one of those impressionist painters he studied in his art history class.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He slinks through his kitchen silently, tiptoeing into his room to avoid waking his mother from her needed rest. Almost exactly the moment he collapses onto his bed, two texts pop up on his screen.</span>
</p><p><b><em>Mark:</em></b> <em><span>hey can you ft?</span></em></p><p>
  <b>
    <em>Mark:</em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span> i got a new game i wanted to show u</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Damien kicks his shoes to his floor and opens the texts, leaning back into his pillows.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It only takes a fraction of a second for the call to get picked up, and Mark is adjusting his phone’s position as he comes onto the screen, his face contorted in concentration. His hair is pushed back lazily, a sign he had been in front of his computer all day.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey man, what’s up?” Damien asks. He can’t help the smile that forms on his face looking at his best friend.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mark settles back into his desk chair, smiling quickly to Damien. “Nothing much. I’ve been playing this game, like, all day.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Damien laughs. “Must be good.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is!” Mark says, starting to ramble on about the mechanics of the game, even though he hadn’t even said the title yet. Damien doesn’t mind, he’s used to Mark’s rambling by now. There is a comfort in listening to his friend speak, the lull of his voice that could relax him no matter how worked up from his shift he was. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Talking was a fantastic distraction from everything going on in Damien’s mind- registering for orientation, scrounging up enough money to keep himself fed through the semester, signing up for classes, and, at the very back of his mind, the new lifeguard at the pool.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>All of that melts away as he sinks into his mattress, Mark’s enthusiastic voice quiet in order to not wake his family. Damien falls asleep listening to Mark play his game, an all-too-common occurrence for them, and settles into a dreamless sleep.</span>
</p>
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